Unknown Light
by DolbyDigital
Summary: "Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best." – Edward Abbey


_"Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best."_ – Edward Abbey

She laughed manically as she pointed her wand at that pathetic excuse for a witch; she could hear the sounds of her husband and brother-in-law torturing the blood traitor husband. She could hear the wails of their brat from upstairs, the terror in the child's wordless screams making her try harder to break her. Today was about forgetting.

_She heard the faint cries of her new-born child from the adjoining room, her sister was with the infant whilst she rested. Her husband wouldn't be back for another week at the very least, which gave her plenty of time to send the child elsewhere and remove all trace of her existence from the manor._

Her curses became even more inventive, her laughter louder, as she tried to drown out the screams of the child. She'd expected her husband to deal with this – normally he wasn't so lenient – but so far his attention was entirely riveted on the man. It was as if the screams didn't bother him.

_She was jolted from her half asleep state by the loud slamming of the door and the running feet of several house elves desperate to please their master. Her heart raced as she attempted to get her worn out body to cooperate with her, panic making her already sluggish movements even more uncoordinated. _

Her laughter could no longer be classified as anything other than the screams of a lunatic – she supposed that was what she was now – but they were sufficient in covering up the sounds of the bawling child.

_Her sister calmly walked into the room, eyes looking anywhere but at her. She began talking of stillbirths – could happen to anyone, it wasn't her fault – but she was no longer listening. It felt like she was seeing everything from an outsider's perspective, as if this wasn't actually happening to her and at some point she would really wake up and everything would be as it should be. For a brief moment it felt as if someone had cast Stupefy on her, and then all was black._

She ended the spell with a final flick of her wand, and the silence left after the screams of the woman was almost deafening in its intensity. She wasn't sure what had happened to the child, but she could see her husband leaning against the wall and watching her with a look of satisfaction on his face.

_She didn't know how much time had passed, but when she next awoke she was alone. Slowly, she pushed her exhausted body to her feet and shuffled into the sitting room. Her husband was sitting calmly drinking from the delicate china cups they usually reserved for guests. When he spotted her, the look of pure satisfaction on his face was something that would always haunt her._

She had reduced the woman to a drooling mess on the floor, and still she didn't feel satisfied. She wanted to bring to world to its knees, to inflict as much suffering onto anyone who crossed her path as she physically could, and then maybe she would be able to remove some of her own pain.

_She sat across from him, holding her shaking hands together in her lap. He was talking about halfbloods and their children and what a disgrace it would bring to an upstanding pureblood family such as their own. She wasn't listening; everywhere she looked she could see blood – covering his hands and her lap, dripping from the chandelier and spreading out from the crack under the door. He had killed her baby, she had failed her child, and this was the scene of the horrendous crime._

She wanted to slit their throats and lay their bodies out like gifts to someone she had never known. She wanted to fall to her knees and beg for the forgiveness that she knew she could never deserve. She wanted to spend an eternity living her life over in the hopes that at least one time she would get it right. Instead, she was forced to live with the choices that she had made – all boiling down to this moment in time where she could think of nothing but a child whose name had only ever been spoken once before.

_"Lucida, I remember your name."_

"Lucida, I remember your name."


End file.
